Friday, April 21, 2023 12:49 pmFriday, April 21, 20231 Comment

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Apple, the world’s most valuable company, has announced a number of new financial offerings, including a credit card, a buy-now-pay-later service, and a high-yield savings account. These offerings are part of Apple’s ambitious plan to become a one-stop shop for all things financial.

Apple has a large and loyal customer base, and it has a deep understanding of how people use their devices. This gives Apple a significant advantage over traditional financial institutions.

Apple’s new financial offerings are also coming at a time when consumers are looking for more convenient and affordable ways to manage their money. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to online and mobile banking, and Apple is very well-positioned to capitalize on this trend.

Telis Demos and Dan Gallagher for The Wall Street Journal:

Consumer loans and retail purchases in the U.S. add up to more than $10 trillion annually — some of the few things still bigger than selling smartphones. And with the turmoil surrounding many lenders and digital payments players, Apple’s ambitious plan might be ripening at just the right time.

After years of slow burn, this past holiday season appears to have been a big one for Apple Pay. E-commerce sales in the U.S. tracked by Salesforce showed that Apple Pay transaction volume grew 62% in the 2022 holiday season versus the prior year, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank. That bumped it up to a 7% share of all the e-commerce sales it tracked. Though that is still only single digits, the move was enough to get investors’ attention across the payments industry.

“Apple Pay hit that inflection point of consumer habituation and merchant adoption,” says Bernstein analyst Harshita Rawat… By one measure, Apple Pay represented about half of all payments made with a smartphone wallet app in stores, almost triple the share of the next player, Google Pay, according to a survey of U.S. consumers conducted last June by Pymnts, a payments data, news and analysis firm…

The company earlier this week launched a savings account for holders of its Goldman Sachs-issued credit card with a 4.15% annual percentage yield… In its initial rollout, Apple Pay Later — a buy now, pay later split-payment offering — is going to be available for online and in-app purchases in the U.S. Were it ever to become available for in-store taps, it could introduce additional competition for card taps and swipes. And the business seems to be an especially attractive one for Apple: People who can afford the most expensive phones are likely an attractive population to extend credit to.

MacDailyNews Take: The fintech future belongs to Apple.

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[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]